Bromley Hustings for London Mayor

Bromley invited Conservative candidates for the London Mayor to supper followed by speeches and debate on the Mayor's powers, under the chairmanship of Nicholas Bennett, Councillor in Bromley.

Bromley has suffered from Ken Livingstone’s meddling with planning powers and there have been constant arguments particularly with regard to the higher planning densities demanded by Livingstone. The most popular view in Bromley is to declare “independence” and re-join Kent, rather than London.

I believe that local Councils should decide local planning policy, yes consult and work with their residents, but not have high targets imposed on them without due regard to the local environment.

Bromley, particularly the town centre, is, like many town centres suffering from “commuter criminals”. This is a new phenomenon where young gangs are abusing their free bus passes travelling to an area where they are not known and not only terrorising other passengers on the way, but also causing criminal damage at their chosen destination, before using public transport to escape detection.

Sorry Ken, Free bus travel for school is fine, but this privilege stops at 7.00pm

Belvedere waste disposal plant

Courtesy of Cory, Councillors from Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham visited the proposed site for this new plant.

Most of the waste will come in on barges and be unloaded at a deep water jetty, where it will then be transported across to the main plant. However the gantries and road system to transport the waste from the river to the plant have to raised to avoid the Thames Path - the footpath alongside the Thames. It will be a massive construction project.

This facility will operate 24 hours a day. The bulk of the ash is recycled to be used in building materials and the contaminated ash is stored in containers and then taken by road to hazardous landfill sites elsewhere.

This will be a vital facility as landfill becomes more expensive and we all need somewhere to dispose of our rubbish, but I can certainly understand why the local residents objected as it is going to be a vast operation.

Like the Olympics site the land is contaminated with cadmium, borax and other unpleasant chemicals and waste, so it is better that this site will be used for the benefit of Londoners, than residential. The residential is currently so far away that the heat generated from this heat and power plant cannot practically be used, however technology continues to develop, so we shall see how this project develops.


more technical details on: http://www.letsrecycle.com/legislation/news.jsp?story=5724

Havering Conservative Future

An innovative evening with several of the potential Conservative Mayoral candidates invited to speak and then challenged to questions.

Havering includes Romford, Upminster and Hornchurch, but as an "outer London" Borough has been ignored by our Zone 1 Mayor and seen many cuts in local transport. Upminster and Hornchurch remain outposts on the district line and Romford the largest Town Centre in East London is off the map - consider the advantages to the residents of Romford is their transport links were improved.
This is an important issue for the next mayor.

Local residents, including our Conservative MPs are also campaigning against a new prison on Rainham Marshes

Conservative Mayoral Candidates

You may have heard on the news and in the papers that Greg Dyke was considering putting himself forward for London Mayor.

There has been a lot of froth and speculation about potential candidates for the London Mayoral elections, but my position is clear. Londoners are bored of Ken Livingstone's left wing posturing. What we want is a Mayor who will tackle the problems we deal with every day: violent crime, getting to work on time, finding somewhere to live and who will get London moving again. This is what I stand for - and I have lived in London all my life.

This year Ken Livingstone is costing the average Londoner over £300 in addition to our council tax - he is too extravagant with our money and his overpaid unaccountable bureaucracy at City Hall is fast becoming like the bad old days of the GLC

Campaigning for the local elections

Telephone campaigning for Woking was a difficult evening, as it is a very marginal seat. Then an interesting visit to Kingston & Surbiton Campaign dinner to meet their prospective Parliamentary candidates, and hear Steve Norris give an excellent speech reminding us of the importance of doing well in these May elections, to beat the Lib Dem challenge.

Saturday was spent canvassing and delivering in Woking - again fighting the Lib Dems. The big issue was crime - just like London - lots of petty crime and how to get young poeple off the streets and feeling they have something positive to do, rather than be vandals and terrorize people in their homes.

I was also amazed at the "land grab" several houses where residents had sold off part of the garden to develop their land, leading to lots of small houses on small plots of land. Other residents of course complaining about this distruption to their neighbourhood.

Conservatives are campaigning to reduce the council tax which has risen steeply here - in comparison to neighbouring Runnymede which is Conservative controlled and has a far lower council tax.

Ken's extra tax for Londoners

So Ken wants to charge us extra for living in London. According to the Evening Standard today 10th April 2007, Ken proposes to charge Londoners an 2p extra income tax.

The wage bill at City Hall is over £30 million. According to the report by Deloittes last year, Ken is spending £1.3 million on his publicity staff, a further £2.4 million was spent on advertising, and £3 million on The Londoner.

If Ken can afford to spend all of this, let alone the £5 million a year on consultant’s fees, he is already charging us all too much. Ken – don’t you understand, Londoners want to choose how they spend their money, and I don’t think they would choose to spend it with you. Tax in Britain is already at a 25 year high. We want value for money and less tax.

Easter Greetings

In Church on Easter Sunday many of us prayed for peace in the world, the traditional, and heartfelt, message at this time of the year.

However in London, the family who led the prayers in the Church we went to as a family, also prayed for an end to the terrible crimes in London – and called for a fresh start to tackling the street crime and violence that is seems to be becoming an almost daily occurrence on our streets.

What a message to us all to take back to our communities. For those of us who believe that Easter is a time of renewal and renewed energies I sincerely hope that we can all work together to stop this tragic waste of young lives.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com

18 Doughy Street.com

Last night, 4th April, on Iain Dale’s Vox Politix show we had an interesting discussion about the news stories of the day, most importantly the imminent release of our 15 sailors and marines. I have put a link below.

On the panel were Timothy Barnes, Chairman of the Tory Reform group, who obviously felt strongly that diplomacy had worked on this occasion, Jonathan Isaby, who many of you may know from his column “spy” in the Daily Telegraph who is also a sephologist, which made for an interesting discussion when we moved on to talk about the forthcoming elections.

A newcomer to the show was Josie Appleton, convenor of the Manifesto Club, who explained to us all the converse affects of the child protection and vetting legislation which has stopped volunteering and inter-generational exchange between adults and children because of the child protection legislation, leaving both sides worse off. This has adversely affected children’s outings, school trips and particularly hobby clubs. You can read her report on
http://www.manifestoclub.com/hubs/vetting

Links:
Iain Dale http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/

Tory Reform Group http://toryreformgroup.wordpress.com/

Manifesto Club http://www.manifestoclub.com/about

The Daily Telegraph http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/littleandlarge/

18 Doughty Street , Vox Politics show

http://doughty.gdbtv.com/player.vox